Potted film reviews by Gary Anthony Cross

Munich (2005)

Based upon real events, Munich tells the story of the Israeli secret service’s operation to assassinate those they felt responsible for the terror attack on their Olympic athletes in 1972.

I’m sure Steven Spielberg has been told how “brave” he was for tackling such sensitive subject matter but for me, he was not brave enough. His obvious unwillingness to takes sides or express any opinion at all on the events portrayed here is the film’s Achilles heel. Without a moral compass and only superficially realised characters and motives – especially considering the lack of context on the world’s political stage – what is left is just a series of documentary style vignettes in which five characters we know little about assassinate a series of targets we have no knowledge of for reasons that are never explained. Eric Bana’s passage from young idealist to hollow-eyed paranoiac seems to happen overnight and so is unconvincing for the same reason.

Munich is a beautifully made film for sure, but it’s also unaffecting and emotionally uninvolving which is disappointing because emotive story telling is usually Spielberg’s forte.